Wednesday, April 24, 2013

US News &World Report just reported yet another potential success using adult-donated stem cells in research. Adult stem cells have been induced with antigens to multiply and become neural-like cells, which researchers confirmed resemble mature brain cells.

From the story,

"The cells proliferated, but also started becoming long and thin and attaching to the bottom of the dish," which is reminiscent of behavior of neural cells, Jia Xie, a research associate on Lerner's team, said in a released statement. Further tests confirmed that they were neural progenitor cells, which are very similar to mature brain cells.

Good news on the ethical front. As more and more successes are seen on the side of ASCR, the need and desire for ESCR becomes fainter and more irrelevant. Of course, the scientific cannibalism of fetuses for their parts has never been ethically acceptable for those of us with problems with murder or that sort of thing. With each ASCR success, perhaps scientists and politicians will decide not to give any more public funding to the legacy of Dr. Moreau. But I'm not holding my breath yet.

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Onto other news on life and death, Jill Stanek wrote a superb bit of history on the now infamous Kermit Gosnell earlier this week. If you haven't heard of Gosnell, I don't entirely blame you. It's not your fault if all you listen to is ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, or CNN. But, it is your fault if you don't listen to Pro-Life Fridays Radio, because we have been talking about the baby neck-snipping abortionist from Philedelphia since 2012. Well, little do people know that Kermit Gosnell has been killing babies and harming women for longer than the two decades that have been in focus of late. In 1972, before Roe v. Wade, Gosnell participated in a "study," along with a "doctor" by the name of Harvey Karman, sponsored by Planned Parenthood, in which Karman tried to teach a group of doctors in Bangladesh how to perform abortions. Later that year, Karman and Gosnell would work together again, this time inside Gosnell's abortion mill in Philedelphia. 15 young, minority women of limited financial means (poor, black women) were bussed from Chicago to Philly to undergo essentially the same experiment. What was it? Harvey Karman used these women to test his newfangled, wave-of-the-future, nearly hands-free abortion device he invented and cleverly named the "super coil." What's that, you ask? Former Gosnell employee Randy Hutchins testified for the Grand Jury Report on Gosnell, and the report says,

(I'll read the second paragraph before the first)

The problem was that they never tested it. They didn’t test it on any animals. They never did any – any – any other human trials. This was not something that was sanctioned by the FDA. This was just something that he decided – he and this guy decided they were going to use on these women."

(and now the first)

"[T]here was a device that he and a psychologist [Karman] were working on that was supposed to be plastic – basically plastic razors that were formed into a ball. All right. They were coated into a gel, so that they would remain closed. These would be inserted into the woman’s uterus. And after several hours of body temperature, it would then – the gel would melt and these 97 things would spring open, supposedly cutting up the fetus, and the fetus would be expelled.

I want everyone to just take a moment to think about what could possibly happen when 97 spring-loaded razor blades are introduced into a pregnant woman's uterus. I'm tempted to give you more than a moment, because apparently it didn't occur to Gosnell or Karman that anything, I dunno, BLOODY could happen, and since they're the doctors, they should know better, right?

Oh wait, did I mention that I put "doctor" in air quotes? I did. Dr. Karman did not have a medical license. In fact, he didn't even go to medical school. In fact in the 1950s, he was considered a convicted felon, having spent time in prison for killing a woman while giving her an abortion in a California hotel room using a nutcracker...until Gov. Jerry Brown pardoned dear Harvey. Harvey Karman simply attached the letters Ph.D to his name, somehow I assume associated with a diploma he obtained from a Swiss degree mill.

But back to our man Gosnell, who Karman enlisted to insert these brilliant super coils into. He was never charged with anything, even though nine of the 15 women suffered severe injuries, which included punctured uteruses, hemorrhages, infections, and retained fetal remains. Hm, who would have thought? If you'd like to know more about this experiment, and I hope we all do, Jill Stanek has provided us with search terms that could be useful, and those words are "Mother's Day Massacre, 1972." The media dubbed it that name, just so you know, not Jill and not us.

I'm going to take a minute to congratulate David Sirota on his wish that the Boston marathon bomber was a "White American." He got the "white," or nearly-white part, correct. I hope he feels good about that. I really do. But I have to say, though, that his dream of having a white, American bomber was already realized in 1969 in the man who would help launch Barack Obama's political career, Bill Ayers. It was also realized in 1995 when Timothy McVeigh exploded a bomb in Oklahoma City. What's missing in Sirota's half-empty glass at this point is saying how many white Americans he would like to see become bombers and whether or not he would be willing to become one of those white American bombers, since he apparently desires so much after them.

Ah, someone on Facebook apparently took issue with me about talking about the bombing today, asking how we can be talking about the reasons for the bombing when no suspect has been caught yet. Well, I didn't announce that we were going to be discussing reasons for the bombing, but that setting off bombs with the intent and knowledge to maim and murder people is a pro-life issue. I don't know--is that really a tough one? But I will tell you that I'll do this, and that's talk about the reasons why it wasn't a bombing by conservative Tea Party people on Tax Day. April 15th is "Tax Day" like President's Day is every president's birthday. April 15th is the last day you have to file your taxes; it's a deadline (gasp, did I just say "dead?"). April 15th is DEAD DAY, not Tax Day!!! Augh, caught me... A second reason why the Boston bombing isn't a bombing by conservative Tea Party people is that no guns were used. Everyone knows conservatives love and cling to their guns and religion, not bombs. Third reason, everyone knows Tea Partiers are racists, and no black people were killed in the bombing! So there. you. go.

Incidentally, April 15th is Israel's national Memorial Day for victims of terrorism. Just sayin'.